Make Urine Samples Trustworthy

14 May 2018, Tim Burton-

We’ve joined with charities across the UK to campaign for a simple change. We’ve set up this petition because we want Jeremy Hunt MP, Minister for Health, to introduce a protocol for how urine samples are collected.

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In the UK there are 65 million urine samples collected every year. 1 in 4 of those will be contaminated before they even make it to the lab. That means that there are 14.6 million occasions each year when a patient either has had to repeat the process or hasn’t been given a correct diagnosis from their urine sample.

Why is this happening?

Unlike blood samples, there isn’t a ‘protocol’ for collecting urine samples. This means that there is no set way to collect a urine sample, so they are often taken incorrectly.

What do we want?

We want the UK Government and the Department of Health to set a standard of urine sample collection that has to be followed across the country.

What would happen if we’re successful?

We believe this change could save the NHS over £30 million a year in direct costs (the need for retesting) and £1.3 billion in indirect costs (in patient and staff time and management savings). We also believe that this change could drastically reduce the number of times patients are misdiagnosed from their urine samples. That could mean cancers being caught earlier, infections being stopped long before a stay in hospital is necessary, and no more retests for patients in this country.